County councils have inspected almost 700 farms in the first three months of 2025, according to provisional data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Councils have been tasked by the EPA to reach a national target of 4,500 initial Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) inspections before the end of the year.
“We expect and need to see a significant increase in inspections for the remainder of the year and local authorities must achieve their individual inspection targets,” the EPA told the Irish Farmers Journal.
Just over 100 inspections were carried out in Tipperary in quarter one of 2025, Cork was next with 90, followed by Meath with 77.
Forty-eight farms apiece were inspected in Laois and Kilkenny.
Next on the list was Monaghan on 39, Kildare on 33 and Offaly with 30 inspections.
Cavan, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, Limerick, Sligo, South Dublin and Westmeath county councils all carried out less than five on-farm inspections during this period.
There were no inspections carried out in Roscommon or Wicklow.
In 2023, the four main reasons for non-compliances on inspections related to the control of soiled water, management of farmyard manure, discharges with potential to impact water quality and slurry collection and storage.
Councils asked those farmers to increase slurry and soiled water storage capacity and have diversions in place for run-off of slurry, soiled water, silage effluent and farmyard manure.
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